In the art of optical fiber splicing, it is increasingly necessary to make splices of reliably high strength in strands of optical fiber cable. Splicing entails having to remove the existing protective coating from the fiber prior to splicing. One prior art stripping device consists of a body with an elongate passage in which the coated fiber is placed. A stripping fluid such as acetone is flowed into the passage to loosen the coating. As the fiber is drawn thereafter out of the passage, interior surfaces within the passage appropriately sized and located strip the coating from the fiber.
One disadvantage of this type of stripper is that the passage geometry as well as the choice of stripper material can cause scoring or scratching of the fiber's surface as the bare glass fiber without its coating is removed from the passage. The scoring can significantly decrease the strength of the fiber in the region of the score, with the result that the splice creates a weak point in the fiber that can fail under tensile stress. Another drawback is that no provisions are made for a clean, planar demarcation between the stripped coating and the coating remaining on the fiber. If the stripping results in a ragged or uneven coating termination, a proper recoating of the fiber following splicing is difficult to achieve.
As a further result, in many prior situations where it is necessary to closely control the location at which the coating ends and the bare fiber is exposed for splicing, the control is not handily available.
One material frequently used in prior art draw-through type strippers is glass. Glass, however, cannot be formed into a stripper by simple processes such as machining. Further, glass because of its relative hardness has a tendency to place scores on the surface of the glass fiber during the draw-through step.